The cold
and harsh reality is that such incidents will continue to
take place with numbing regularity. The principal reason
for this is not the failure of particular Forces or
administrations to ‘deal with’ the situation, but
utterly insupportable deficits in capacities that make a
coherent response to the Maoist
threat impossible in the near term, and that will take
years to address, even if there is a complete consensus
(and there is none) across the affected States and the
Central leadership, on the strategy and course of action
to be adopted.

- South Asia Intelligence
Review, Volume 5, No. 36, March 19, 2007

It is not clear
whether Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was able to sleep after he
heard the news of the 24 Policemen slaughtered by the Maoists in
the Elampatti-Regadgatta forests of the Dantewada District of
Bastar Division in Chhattisgarh on July 9, 2007, but it is clear
that this incident did not merit a public reaction from him [in
contrast to his fervently articulated anguish over the suffering
of the parents of Indian terrorists arrested in London and
Australia]. This is unsurprising, considering the sheer frequency
of such incidents. It is less than four months after 55 Policemen
were massacred by the Maoists on March 15 at Rani Bodli in the
Bijapur District, again in Bastar, and the Maoists have already
butchered a total of 119 Security Force (SF) personnel in
Chhattisgarh in 2007 (till July 15), in at least 31 significant
attacks on the Forces. The Prime Minister of India cannot be
expected to respond to so quotidian a succession of events.

Significantly,
the total Maoist fatalities in Chhattisgarh in 2007 stood at 58 on
July 15, yielding a SF:Maoist ratio of 1:0.487 – more than two
SF personnel killed for each Maoist fatality. It must be
abundantly clear where the initiative lies in the conflict in
Chhattisgarh.

In the wake of
the latest attack in the Elampatti-Regadgatta forests, Union Home
Minister Shivraj Patil has informed the nation that "force
alone cannot be a solution to end Naxalism" (Maoism). But the
acute deficit of Force manifest in Chhattisgarh can hardly be part
of the "holistic solution" that the Home Minister
envisages. Even more, the total deficit of political and
administrative will evident in every aspect of the
counter-insurgency apparatus and action in the State cannot be
part of any possible solution to a crisis that has augmented
continuously since the creation of the Chhattisgarh State in 2000.

The growth of
the Maoist power in Chhattisgarh has been systematic and entirely
pre-planned, based on a tactical decision taken in December 1999
– January 2000 by the then-People’s War Group (PWG, now
Communist Party of India – Maoist, since the PWG’s merger with
the Maoist Communist Centre under this banner in September 2004),
to permanently locate all important Party cadres in the forest
areas of the Dandakaranya ‘Special Zone’ (DKSZ), prinicipally
centering around the unsurveyed and near-impenetrable Abujhmadh
Forest area in the Bastar Division (and overflowing into the
Gadchiroli District of neighbouring Maharashtra). Abujhmadh has
since been declared the Maoist’s ‘Central Guerilla Base
Area’, and is the location where the Party Central Committee –
including its ‘General Secretary’, Muppala Laxmana Rao @
Ganapathy – and its various formations take shelter. The
objective is to transform the DKSZ into the country’s first
‘liberated area’ – an objective that is still far in the
future, though increasing parts of the area have been brought
under intensifying guerilla activity.

Seven years is a
long time in a counterinsurgency context, but while the Maoists
have been vigorously building their movement – now afflicting as
many as 16 of Chhattisgarh’s 20 Police Districts – the
state’s responses have been abysmal. Despite the hysteria that
each major Maoist attack provokes, the tasks of capacity building
for an effective response have been persistently neglected, and a
blame game between the Centre and the State Government appears to
be the principal element of the political response. At the end of
these seven years of neglect, the ground situation in terms of the
state’s capacities of response is deeply troubling.

For one, Force
Deficits are endemic. The density of the police force in terms of
both police strength/population and police strength/area ratios is
poor, and well below the national average, and is woefully
inadequate for the counter-insurgency needs of the State; indeed,
it is insufficient even for normal law and order administration.
Specifically, the all India average police-population ratio stands
at 122 per 100,000 population. The UN norm for minimum police
strength is about 222 per 100,000 (1:450). Most Western countries
have ratios in the region of 250 to 500 per 100,000. Some Indian
States also have very high ratios; e.g., Mizoram: 854/100,000;
Sikkim: 609 per 100,000. By contrast, Chhattisgarh has a sanctioned
strength of 103 per 100,000.

The crisis is
compounded by an endemic gap between sanctioned strength and the
force available, which varies between 20 per cent and over 50 per
cent at various ranks, and even more in the Maoist affected areas,
where the deficit at certain ranks may be as high as 79 per cent
(e.g. at the rank of Sub-Inspectors in the Bastar Division, where
only 8 of 38 sanctioned posts were filled at the end of 2006).

National Crime
Records Bureau (NCRB) data for Chhattisgarh indicates that, in the
ranks from Deputy Superintendent of Police to Senior
Superintendent of Police, the deficit in Chhattisgarh (as on
31.12.2005) was 29.9 per cent (223/318); at the rank of
Sub-Inspector (SI) and Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI), it was 36.6
per cent (1392/2194). Crucial posts in Naxalite affected areas
have remained vacant for extended periods of time, while some such
posts are held by unwilling or unsuitable officers who lack the
profile and motivation necessary for effective counter-insurgency
operations. As the data on police-population ratios indicates,
sanctioned posts are themselves well below the needs of the State.

The ratio of
Police personnel to the total Area of the State is also very poor,
and is well below the national average. The all India average
stands at 42 per 100 square kilometres. The figure for
Chhattisgarh is just 17 per 100 square kilometres. The situation
is worsened by a lopsided distribution of this Force. The
situation in the Bastar Division – the heart of the violence in
Chhattisgarh – is disturbing. For an area of 39,114 square
kilometres, the five Police Districts of Bastar Division have a
total sanctioned strength 2,197 policemen (5.62 policemen per 100
kilometres). Actual availability is just 1,389, nearly 37 per cent
short of the authorized numbers, yielding a ratio of just 3.55
policemen per 100 square kilometres.

Efforts have
been made to ‘fill’ this gap with deployment of Central
Paramilitary Forces (CPMFs). However, the numbers available are a
tiny fraction of the requirements of the State. Thus, some 85
companies of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) are currently
available for the whole of Chhattisgarh. It is useful to note,
here, that Manipur, a State of just about 2.4 million people, has
a police-population ratio of 535 per 100,000, and in
addition has almost 350 companies of Central Forces
deployed for counter-insurgency operations in the State.
Manipur’s geographical area (22,327 square kilometres) is just
over half the Bastar Division (39,114 square kilometres). The
population of Chhattisgarh, at nearly 21 million, is almost 9
times that of Manipur.

Worse, there are
critical gaps between the deployment and employment even of this
limited force. While some Force augmentation has occurred over the
past year, the utilisation of this increased manpower is
inefficient and often entirely unproductive. A bulk of the
additional Force recruited within the State (Chhattisgarh Armed
Force, CAF), over the past year, for instance, has been kept out
of the areas of intensive conflict, and has been utilised in
relatively ‘safe areas’. The Government of Chhattisgarh has
set up a Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School, which had,
by February 2007, already trained at least 2,590 Police officers
and men. A majority of these trained personnel are, however,
deployed for a range of static duties and in urban areas,
reflecting a tremendous waste of trained manpower.

In the Bastar
Division a total of some 11 battalions of CPMFs – nine
battalions of CRPF, one battalion Naga and one battalion Mizo –
are currently deployed.

Of the total
armed Force in Chhattisgarh – State and Central – no more that
1,800 to 2,000 personnel are engaged in offensive
counter-terrorist operations. More than 80 per cent of this
augmented force is deployed for passive defence, protecting Salwa
Judum (the anti-Maoist ‘people’s’ movement)camps,
important Government installations and projects, including
road-building and the railways, and VIPs or others under threat.

Crucially, the
available Force in the affected areas is simply too small even to
protect itself – as has been evident in the numbers of
successful attacks to which it has been subjected – leave alone
act forcefully against the Maoists. In the Bastar Division, for
instance, an additional Force of over 80 companies is required for
the protection of existing Police Stations, Police Posts and
important Government establishments and projects.

By and large,
the State Police has tried to offload the bulk of
counter-insurgency responsibilities onto the Central Forces, with
no more than an estimated 300 State Police personnel actually
deployed in offensive counter-insurgency operations. But Central
Forces have obvious difficulties in operating in unfamiliar and
difficult geographical and cultural terrain, and tend to be
starved of adequate operational intelligence. The State’s Home
Minister, Ram Vichar Netam has now conceded that the CRPF has
"not proved very effective till now, they have not had any
extraordinary results. You need to mix them up with the local
police for effective policing." It is not clear what has
prevented the Home Minister and the State Police from "mixing
up" the local police with the CRPF till this point in time,
or whether specific steps have now been taken for such operational
integration..

Grave
deficiencies of leadership also afflict the state, beyond the more
obvious numerical deficits in Police leadership. The quality of
senior officers in the State cadre, with occasional exception, is
poor, and levels of motivation are low. The will to engage in
counter-insurgency tasks is almost uniformly absent at the top
levels of command. Most senior officers have spent their entire
careers serving in a thinly administered area of what was earlier
Madhya Pradesh (before 2000), with only minimal law and order
management experience. These officers are not psychologically
oriented to make the transition to a rigorous counter-insurgency
role, and largely tend to evade responsibilities relating to
counter-insurgency operations. Few officers are willing to accept
postings in the affected areas and, at senior levels, few are even
willing to tour the worst affected areas. The top Police
leadership, consequently, remains overwhelmingly confined to
Raipur.

In the absence
of basic capacities and will, other innovations – including
technical and technological ‘force multipliers’ – are
destined to inevitable failure. Thus, the introduction of unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs) to detect and help neutralize Maoist
movements and concentrations in the forests has failed to produce
the desired results. Unless followed up with immediate operational
responses, the data generated through UAV monitoring is of little
value. But with Forces principally moving about on foot, the
capacity for such quick responses in the deep jungle are
negligible. Worse, there is now evidence that UAV monitoring is
being deliberately undermined by leaks from within the
establishment. Indian Air Force (IAF) officers managing the UAV
operations in the State have grounded their craft, complaining
that ‘intelligence leaks on flight details’ had undermined the
utility of the spy drones. Unnamed IAF officials have hinted at a
‘lack of will’ in the State Government and problems of
coordination with the State Forces. In the initial months of UAV
deployment, a number of Maoist ‘hotspots’ had been detected,
but there were no follow-up operations by the Forces.

Some
hare-brained schemes are now being conjured as a quick fix for the
existing gaps, based on a questionable understanding of the
‘Andhra Model’ and the experience of the Greyhounds in that
State. Reports suggest that ‘a dozen’ Quick Reaction Teams of
‘crack commandos’ are shortly to be deployed in Jharkhand and
Chhattisgarh, to be ‘air dropped in dense forests… equipped
with carbines, grenades, jungle knives and a week’ rations…
Like the Greyhounds of Andhra Pradesh, their brief would be to
launch swift guerrilla operations against the Maoists’. What is
missed out here is that the Greyhounds in Andhra Pradesh operate
within a pervasive policing environment that has been
systematically strengthened and that has established overwhelming
capacities for containment of Maoist movement and operations. With
small groups of Maoists dispersed over limited forest areas, and
possessing relatively insignificant residual capacities for large
scale resistance, these groups are vulnerable to focused attack by
a highly trained and rapidly deployed force. Within an enveloping
environment of the breakdown of policing, and dominance of wide
areas, not only of the forests, but of extended contiguous zones,
by the Maoists, and little capacity for immediate and massive
reinforcement, a QRT dropped into a jungle would, in most cases,
simply be overwhelmed and slaughtered.

At a par with
this is the Chief Minister, Raman Singh’s repeated emphasis,
over the past three months, of initiating a ‘dialogue’ with
the Maoists. The Bharatiya Janata Party, to which the Chief
Minister belongs, was one of the most vociferous critics of the
disastrous ceasefire and negotiations with the Maoists in Andhra
Pradesh in 2004. It appears that electoral considerations –
Chhattisgarh goes to the polls in end 2008 – may tempt the State
leadership to enter into an unprincipled and inevitably
counter-productive deal with the Maoists, leading to further
deferment of counter-insurgency operations against the rebels, and
to a deeper consolidation of their forces across the State.

State Police
sources estimate that the Maoists in Chhattisgarh have an armed
cadre of over 5,000, equipped with sophisticated assault weapons,
including AK-47 rifles, SLRs, machine guns, mortars, landmines and
explosives. These ‘full-time revolutionaries’ are backed by at
least 20,000 ‘people’s militia’ members, who are variously
armed with SLRs, .303 rifles, ‘country made’ guns, and
traditional weapons such as bows and arrows, and who have
participated in the increasing numbers of ‘swarming attacks’
on SF units, posts and encampments. [Interestingly, Central
agencies are currently and vigorously peddling the fiction that
the total armed strength of the Maoists across India is just
4,000, with 4,100 weapons – if that was even remotely close to
the truth, we would have little to worry about]. The strength of
the sympathetic base on which this armed capacity is founded is
difficult to estimate, but would obviously be substantial.

It must be
abundantly clear that Chhattisgarh simply does not have even the
numerical capacities to contain an insurgency of this magnitude.
Worse, existing capacities remain enormously under-utilized and
misdirected, and there is increasing evidence of a progressive
collapse of political will at the highest levels of the State
leadership to confront the challenge of the Maoist onslaught.
Sadly, that means that many more SF personnel – thrown without
plan, preparation or purpose into the conflagration – will
fruitlessly lose their lives in the foreseeable future.

It can only be
hoped that, eventually, someone, somewhere, in India’s corridors
of power, will lose a little sleep over this as well.